Bass Ackwards
by Nukumi
Summary: We've been here before, you and me. Me and you. And we'll be back again. AsuAnko, AsuKure.


**Bass Ackwards**

She thinks it is his mouth that she likes most about him. It is what catches her attention in the beginning and what will keep her coming back for years to come. It's the way his lips wrap around the cigarettes he's too young to be smoking. It's the way his voice has the bassline of a very seductive song. It's how he speaks with a tongue so silver that you could know he was lying and still believe him. It's the way that he presses his mouth to hers and she forgets everything but the feeling of warmth and the taste of nicotine.

She meets him in a bar at the ripe age of fifteen, violet hair a mass of tangles and a haphazard bandage coming undone around her bicep as she strolls in straight from the end of a mission. He doesn't look his best either with a square of gauze taped to one side of his face, bruising visible around it's edges, and a large bloodstain covering the majority of his right pantleg. But he sits perched on a barstool alternately drawing puffs from a cigarette in one hand and downing shots from the glass in his left hand and carrying on some raunchy conversation with Kotetsu and Izumo as if totally oblivious of his appearance. She glares down a civillian girl to claim the seat next to him, he turns his head to look out of reflex, and there is a brief moment of tranquility as they size each other up with their eyes. She is brash, and starts to formulate a comment on how well he holds his liquor when he interrupts her to introduce himself. He is bold, that's her first impression of him, as he refers to himself arrogantly as _the man whose name you'll be screaming later._

Luckily, Anko favors boldness, and he proves himself right.

It isn't even until three months later that she discovers he is the Hokage's son, not that it would have made a difference to her. They've had two more one-night stands since then and already he's moved on to some nameless chuunin with wide hips and she herself is contemplating taking Iruka's virginity. She doesn't know what else he's been up to and frankly she doesn't care, Orochimaru's been overly demanding and even stranger than usual lately, and she doesn't have as much time for screwing around anymore. Sarutobi Asuma, with his sun-kissed skin and chocolate brown eyes has already been written off as a fling in the back of her mind, and she thinks nothing more of him.

She is away on a mission when the Third busts her sensei in his experiment laboratory and runs him out of town. Though not entirely surprised, because something in her brain has been telling her for a while now that he wasn't quite right in the head, she takes the desertion harder than she expected. After a thorough round of questioning from Konoha's top interrogaters, Anko finds herself back at the same bar again. And coincidentally, she finds him there too. What follows afterwards is anything but a coincidence.

When a few more months have burned away and they find themselves still wrapped up in each other, they decide to try their hand at an actual relationship. It doesn't go as planned. Asuma's eyes keep roaming over other women in ways that suggest more than mere _thoughts_ about cheating and Anko is no better, having just returned from a mission last week with Kakashi, whom she couldn't stop herself from seducing. They part amicably, without all the screaming and shouting other dying relationships have, and the two of them think they have finally gotten each other out of their systems.

They haven't. A month later finds them screwing on Genma Shiranui's bed while the jonin is less than fifty feet away, in the shower. By the time he comes out, they are both gone and Anko is no longer his girlfriend. It's over again nine weeks later when Asuma calls out someone else's name.

At seventeen, they've learned enough about each other to pass for a legitimate couple. The problem is, they've also learned enough about each other to know that they can't even begin to pass as legitimate _parents_, and it's a surprisingly short conversation before Asuma accompanies Anko to the hospital and the testament to their relationship is _taken care of_. They've learned enough about each other, but understanding is still out of reach and they soon call it quits. Anko swears she can't stand his womanizing and Asuma swears he's tired of dealing with her.

If time has anything to say about it, they're both lying. Ten years pass, and between girlfriends, boyfriends, lovers and fiancees, they are always on again/off again like a flickering lightbulb. They've grown into such significant parts of each other that neither of them know anymore, if they ever knew, why it is that they keep boomeranging right back. The end to their unconventional relationship comes during one of their 'off' periods, completely unexpected and irrevocably final.

Sarutobi Asuma is dead.

By now Anko is used to people leaving her, and even though his death stings, she can't say that she is shocked or even grieving whole-heartedly. It's just a little pain - a ghost pain from an injury long since healed. This changes though, when she learns of Kurenai's pregnancy. Where before she quietly accepted the facts, now everything is up for questioning. Did he know Kurenai was pregnant? If he had known, would he have taken her to the hospital too? Did he love Kurenai? Had he ever loved _her_? They had screwed, comforted, dated, conceived, and fought over one another but she isn't sure exactly where the love came in, if it ever had.

Sometimes, she's not even sure if they _liked_ each other, just that there was a gravitation between them. An inescapable pull that refused to recede in the face of time, distance, and obligations. But like all of the previous chapters of her life, it's over, and if it ever mattered - the jealousy, the tender touches, secret smiles, playful banter - then it doesn't anymore. Every emotion she has come to feel for him will be put to rest when they carve his name on the stone.

She doesn't put much faith in luck, but if Anko has any luck at all maybe they'll meet again in another time, another life.

If she's _really_ lucky, maybe next time they'll get things right.

* * *

A / N : Just purging plot bunnies. And I like the thought of a KureAsuAnko triangle.


End file.
